User Reviews

Director Lewin started out on his own with a trio of literary adaptations: Somerset Maugham's Moon And Sixpence (1943) was followed by Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945), and then came this version of Guy de Maupassant's best novel, Bel-Ami, in 1947. George Sanders appeared in all three, giving each a distinct flavour by his presence. A self-obsessed and destructive individual appears in all, increasingly prepared to isolate himself from conscience or morality in order to achieve his goals - at least until an ending brings some comeuppance or resolution. In the first, Sanders plays a Gauguinesque painter, who deserts his family to work in Tahiti. In the second, Dorian Gray pursues his famously immoral activities, Sanders in attendance, whilst Gray's famous painting grows ugly in the attic. In The Private Affairs Of Bel Ami (aka: Women Of Paris, 1947), Sanders returns to centre stage portraying a man climbing to social success over a succession of suffering women.

Scriptwriter-director Lewin brought to each of these films characteristic qualities: literate dialogue, visual excellence, and a representation of interior states through colourful moments of art among them. In the fin de siècle worlds of Dorian Gray and Bel Ami, Lewin sharpens the unease and implicit questioning of mores shown in his earlier Maugham adaptation. Avoiding the temptations of melodrama, he chooses specific historical milieu by which to communicate the ennui of the privileged and the corrupt. Sanders is excellent as George Duroy, the title's charming and unscrupulous social climber, who cannot be trusted with hearts - or come to that, much else: one in the words of the title song who " will be leaving me, (and) who will be deceiving me.." First seen down to his last few francs in 1880's Paris, Duroy's suave looks continually make him irresistible to women have brought him little in the way of fortune. Offered a chance job in journalism by his ex-army friend Forestier (John Carradine), Duroy asks Forestier's independently minded wife Madeline to help with the creation of a first article, while also entering into a relationship with the far more doting Clotilde (Angela Lansbury). Soon the seductive antihero is on his way up the social scale after marrying Madeline (a suggestion he promptly broached in the hapless Forestier's death chamber). Later after engineering a scandal, he divorces this first wife, and acquires a defunct aristocratic title with a view to moving on and up again.

"You're a sneak thief... you take advantage of everyone, you deceive everyone," is the way the disillusioned Clotilde eventually personifies Duroy towards the end of the film, after he callously steals her heart, another man's wife and half her inheritance, then the family name of a missing heir, and finally inveigles the hand of a rich innocent. This single-minded obsession in reaching the top of the social ladder echoes that of the ambitious Horace Vendig in Ulmer's Ruthless, made the following year. Duroy's manipulative, seductive charm brings echoes too of Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, also from 1947. But while Duroy's progress does not directly lead to murder, it is more detestable and insidious. Whereas at the close of his film Verdoux offers disingenuous apology for his actions, Bel Ami (although saddled with a ending more in line with the demands of the censor than the original novel) is unrepentant, equating his final misfortunate as being "scratched... by an old cat." There are several elements that make Lewin's film interesting today, being the independent work of a minor, if idiosyncratic auteur, then relatively unusual. Even though the aspirational cad makes use of the women he gets to know, Madeline remains a strong and talented character in her own right. Besides helping Duroy with his writing at the very start, there is a strong suggestion that she has actually been doing much of her first husband's journalism for him too. And despite her final betrayal, she continues to impress as an individually motivated female, in contrast to the ever-loving and forgiving Clotilde. Both are victims but Duroy's emotional abuse and subjugation of them and others is a comment on his own coldness as well as on the liabilities of females in a prejudiced society, made especially keen by the knowledge each woman has of her own predicament. For men, the answer to honour slighted is a duel. Women at best are obliged to fall back on subterfuge or, at worst, live with the grief of a broken heart.

Each of Lewin's first three films was made in black and white. But they also included moments when the screen bursts into startling colour, as the audience contemplates painting central to the theme. The Moon And Sixpence brings a final sequence showing the artist's work, a form of artistic justification for preceding events. In The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, the painting in question reflects back directly the moral dissolution of the subject. Bel Amis' canvas occupies a more complex position in its narrative than its predecessors. It's an expensive work of art, bought by a wealthy patron and admired by Duroy, - one of the few moments in which, half to himself, he evidently expresses an honesty with anything. Painted by Max Ernst (his Temptation Of St Anthony) it reflects back the decadence of its admirers, as well as continuing the plot's subtle thread of damnation.

An excellent cast includes a young Lansbury as Duroy's one true love, and John Carradine as his tuberculosis-ridden journalist friend. Audiences today will be impressed by how modern the feel of it all is, whether in the depiction of Duroy's amoral, manipulative character, completely unfazed at being disliked, or the film's sophisticated and sympathetic treatment of women. Lewin's next work was the weirdly romantic Pandora And The Flying Dutchman (1951), his most ambitious film, the reception of which proved a disappointment. He never rose to such heights again. The Private Affairs Of Bel Ami, is less flamboyant perhaps but just as unforgettable, remaining his most satisfying work.

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami gave George Sanders to play a leading role as Guy de Maupassant's gentleman cad who rises in Parisian society over the bodies of a number of seduced and abandoned women. Sanders is a former dragoon who uses his charm to acquire money and power and in the end a title of minor nobility in Third Republic France. The one woman whom he truly loves, Angela Lansbury, is forever lost to him. Would she have brought him real happiness? It's for the audience to judge.

The comparisons between Bel Ami and Sanders's Oscar winning Addison DeWitt have to be made. Both men are cynics about human nature, but whereas theater critic DeWitt is an observer and a behind the scenes manipulator of others, Bel Ami is doing it all for his own advancement. Both performances have that touch of cad about them and they rank as some of the best work George Sanders did.

Look for good performances from John Carradine as Sanders's only true male friend and Angela Lansbury who he loves, but who can't give him the social standing he needs.

Also of course look for Warren William in his farewell role as Sanders's main antagonist. A not very brave, but a fairly shrewd sort, Sanders regularly bests him until the very end.

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami was a rather daring film for Code run Hollywood, it doesn't surprise me it was an independent movie, released by United Artists.

Fans of The Eternal Cad George Sanders will eat it up.

The movie is is faithful to the novel for about 3/4 of its running time. A handsome, amoral rake cuts his way through the vain, naive, foppish,self centered denizens of Parisian society in the 1880s He is not that smart, but he is shrewd enough to get the money and affection he craves. We don't know where his appetites came from. De Maupassant created him primarily to show the appalling psychological weaknesses of French upper class society "Prety Boy", as he is called, wins and wins big.

Well, the morals code of 1947 would not permit this. A scoundrel thriving is as bad was a naked woman on screen in the 1940s. You couldn't show it! Thus, the entire last section of this movie is made to comply with the code, and it plays out a story of how "Pretty Boy"'s primary victim thwarts his schemes and gets even. She gets even Big.

While I am happy to see the rat get his, this ending undermines the main point of the novel. It also doesn't fit the first three quarters. Characters suddenly behave differently than they did previously with no description of how and why they changed.

Still, it is a literate and intelligent movie. Not many of this kind of movie was made then, and even fewer are made today It is well played. George Sanders is the perfect cad. All the female actors do very well. Even since I first saw Ann Dvorak when I was six or seven, I have had a crush on her all these many decades, so it was good to see her.

Well worth the time for intelligent viewers...and those seniors who love Ann Dvorak!!

"The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" is one of the most unusual films to come out of Hollywood during the Golden Age of Hollywood (1920-1950). An adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant work, "Bel Ami" honestly and bitingly portrays an "homme fatale", a man who uses sex to gain social, economic, and political power. This is the only film, to my knowledge, that portrays such a phenomenon that in real life has been much more common than is commonly held.

George Sanders was never better than as Georges DuRoy. His playing displays the numbing of feelings, desperation of a life of poverty and low social rank, and misogyny that propel him to do what he does. No film character in the Golden Age of Hollywood was as blatantly hateful of women as Georges DuRoy. Witness the scenes with Sanders and Marie Wilson!

The female characters display a moderness in attitudes, relationships with men, and an awareness of their roles in their relationships with Georges DuRoy that is startling not just for 1880, but for 1947, when the film was released. Only French and some Italian films of the 1960's have equalled that frankness by female characters of what their place is in the lives of men.

Ann Dvorak carries much of the film gracefully and with a strong, frank portrayal of a woman much like Georges DuRoy and unapologetic about it. This is definitely Dvorak's finest and the showiest role of her career. Unfortunately, it did not propel her to major stardom and she retired from acting only three years after filming "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami".

Angela Lansbury proved here in this early film of her career what a fine character actress she is. Her portrayal of Clothilde could've been pathetic. Instead, Clothilde emerges as well-rounded character who is never tiresome to watch.

Marie Wilson never got a dramatic part like the one in this film as a Folies Bergere dancer. She only proves the point that behind every great comedienne lies a fine dramatic actress. She truly evokes a character, not the dumb blonde comedy relief that was her stock-in-trade.

A surprising number of top character actors in this film! The film's look and score are very noirish. That only highlights the modernity of the characters in the film, much like 2000's "Moulin Rouge".

The movie looks and plays like an RKO-Radio film noir of the mid-'40's.

Cool concept. The startling use of color for the one scene in which it is used only adds to the uniqueness of this film's acting and look.

The only drawback is the use of decidedly obvious painted backdrops. They only highlight the low budget that was obviously involved in making the film. Too bad, while the rest of the sets appear well-lighted and -appointed.

An arresting film! Definitely worthy of critical and popular reevaluation!

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)

The weary diffidence of George Sanders makes this movie what it is, but there is a rather large cast of important characters who hold up their types, too. Only Sanders in the lead role (as the Bel Ami) has full roundness to his character. Look, however, for John Carradine and Elsa Lancaster, both welcome and convincing, though they only appear sporadically. Ann Dvorak takes on the second most important role and she's terrific, cast perfectly and acting with cunning.

The story is a period piece, set in late 19th century France. It centers really around one idea--Sanders, who is portraying a real lady's man, gets several women interested in him (or he in them) with somewhat suspicious goals (like money) under his hat. The first half of the movie has these women at odds with each other and Sanders playing his hand just so. Then he lands one of them and a different kind of ambition takes over his life, with some tricks to become yet wealthier. And the movie shifts. It gets fairly complex, based on a French novel by Guy de Maupassant. It has enormous potential, and yet it never quite gels. You can imagine a "Magnificent Ambersons" kind of construction to make it work, but that would require more length. And Orson Welles.

The writing is naturally amazing at times. The characters, as much as they get developed, are intelligent and say intelligent things.

There are two aspects that plague this version. First is Sanders himself. He's one of my favorite actors of this era, but he has a limited kind of style and he's miscast here, lacking the charm and fast wit you would need to pull off all these machinations, some romantic and some political. Second is the way the story is told, cramming the pieces together, jumping from one moment into the future as if there wasn't time to mention that so and so meanwhile died, or that our main man in fact got married. Sometimes this kind of economy makes for a fast movie, but here it feels too harshly edited.

And then there is the slight falseness to the filming, all done in studios, with hints of the city in the background, beautiful but unconvincing light, and sound that is dubbed or added and is sometimes painfully wrong (Sanders whistling without moving his lips, Carradine playing a complicated accordion piece on an instrument without keys, footsteps on a stone walk that sound like a wooden stage, a singer who...you get the idea). The director, Albert Lewin, had a thriving career writing for silent movies (there is an irony in that, I suppose), then he became a producer in the 1930s before switching to directing just a half dozen films in the 1940s. Only one of these has a reputation--The Picture of Dorian Gray--with this one a kind of runner-up. But whatever its promise, it struggles to take off as either a romantic heart-tugger or a social high drama.

Small tidbit--Uma Thurman and others are filming a remake of this story, and naturally all the womanizing has taken on a sexual quality, from what I can see. That's a strength with the way Lewin shot and edited this early one, because we get the way the leading man is a selfish cad without having to get distracted into the prurient details that would distract, even further, from the larger plot.

Albert Lewin's reputation rests almost entirely on two films, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" but his masterpiece must surely be the little known and little seen "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" from the novel by Guy De Maupassant. It is, of course, a very witty portrait of a cad, beautifully played by George Sanders, but it is also a film of considerable psychological depth and one of the most adult and intelligent American pictures of the forties with not a trace of the camp usually associated with the director.

Rather we get an incisive picture of a period and that rarefied milieu of high Parisian society, beautifully written by Lewin and superbly played by everyone. In particular Angela Lansbury is outstanding as the one woman Sanders might actually have feelings for. It's a great performance that should have made Lansbury a major Hollywood player rather than simply the great character actress she became. Even the usually wooden Warren William excels here. If any film cries out for a restoration it is this one.

Maupaussant's roaring tale of the rise of Duroy is tamed slightly in this version, with George Sanders bumbling rather scheming his way to the top. It's let down by some poor production values, although the dueling scene at the end is well handled. Worth watching for the shocking view of 'The Temptation of St Anthony' in ultra-modern colour (about three quarters the way through) alone.

Virtually the same story as the same star's later and contemporary DEATH OF A SCOUNDREL, THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI sees George Sanders on fine caddish form as a swine who works his way through a series of unfortunate women in 19th century France.

The story is well staged by Albert Lewin, who wrings plenty of melodrama out of the events, and of course there's a great performance by George Sanders - one of the original "guys you love to hate" - as the titular bad guy. He's also given decent support by Angela Lansbury (who'd suppose she was ever young?) and John Carradine, playing outside of B-movies for once.

The story is well paced and has a decent script, based on a story by ace writer Guy de Maupassant. It has inevitably dated in the years since release, lacking the moments of high drama that you'd expect from the premise, but it makes up for it with the dramatic stand-off at the climax.

The A list supporting character actor George Sanders stole more than his share of big pictures with considerable less screen time than the leads he was usually berating in the most polished fashion. In the rare moments he had the lead such as The Moon and Sixpence and here in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami where he displayed a highly impressive ability like no other for he was the ultimate cad.

Down on his luck former army officer and ladies man George Duroy (Sanders) encounters an old dying comrade (John Carradine) who gains him an invitation to a party of sophisticates and power brokers where he charms the women to no end. Through his contact at the soiree with a publisher he gains employment at a newspaper. Filled with ambition and possessed of a keen wit he makes his way up the ladder with seduction playing a key factor. Brimming with confidence he seeks a title through vacancy but ends up on a field of honor instead.

Few films far more celebrated in this period hold up today as well as the underrated at the time Bel Ami. Director Albert Lewin writes and directs a highly literate script filled with piercing dialogue by a host of 19th Century sophisticates exhibiting all of the capital sins with touches of virtue here and there. The dinner scene crackles with intensity, economically establishing character and motive early as Duroy cooly sizes everyone up. Sharply edited and photographed (Russell Metty) it rates with some of the best table talk to come out of this film period in an understated style and form that Lewin conveys throughout the film exemplified in another stunning scene beautifully composed where his benefactor is dying, the wife bedside, the anxious Duroy present, waiving grieving period to immediately make his intentions known.

Sanders was made to play the amoral Duroy and he does to perfection as eviscerates those around him with mellifluous contempt. " One thing I hate in other people is their hypocrisy," he claims, feeling his is justified. It is the best role of Sander's impressive career. There's half a dozen excellent supporting roles of victims of his seduction and betrayal that balance Sanders, especially the restrained performances of Ann Dvorak as his cold equal and Katherine Emery who serves her revenge with a sober gloat and just in time.

A well done film in every aspect but without the juice of the big star, it's cynical theme and protagonist lacking little appeal, probably ignored in its day for the more formulaic. But like a fine wine it has aged well.

Although hard to get into this film, with a protagonist who is very unlikable and who, for all his scheming, seems to be falling upward in the social hiearchy more than effectively manipulating those he seeks to use, the movie is worth watching in order to contemplate the young and beautiful Angela Lansbury and the older, wiser, but still beautiful Ann Dvorak. And for the climactic duel.(And some might find the couture sufficiently haute to be worth watching.)

The score by the great French composer, one of Les Six, Darius Milhaud, is pedestrian. Milhaud is not responsible for the annoying song "Bel Ami" which recurs far too often during the seemingly interminable 112 minutes of the movie in the version I saw.

To criticize this movie so many decades later seems belated, yet the book is a classic and the eponymous character is a sort of media type we all know very well today.

Sanders's Bel Ami is one of the great portrayals of its era, but it ain't the book, and as such, the phrase, based on, is more weighty than usual.

Whilst the movie largely uses the plot - with one major caveat - it also deviates from it for several reasons from the book. For a start, Bel Ami on screen is not like the Maupassnat's creation. He is too clever and well spoken from the get go,whereas the real Bel Ami is a hillbilly who is a very vulgar and crude speaker, let alone, writer. He develops abilities but is still not even a bourgeois, and certainly not a gentleman.

Secondly, the women use him as a gigolo because he's good looking and sexy and they help him but the female sexuality in the book is way too racy for a Hollywood film of this period, and so it is erased in favor of his cunning, which he has, but only because the woman take him in for their own pleasure. Ultimately, they play each other in a self interested game; Bel Ami uses the women but they had exploited him too.

As to the ending, well, Hollywood had a morals police ensuring bad actions got their just deserts, which the recent film version ignores and follows the book. ( It has its own faults in Patterson but that is another thing). Maupassant's Bel Ami's is a clever observation of a political and media culture which is not so distant to now This film tale is the ersatz kiddie version as if to protect the viewer from real insight.

On paper, a middle-aged, faintly portly George Sanders doesn't seem to befit the image of Georges Duroy, aka. Bel Ami, the caddish protagonist of Maupassant's belle époque novel, and on the screen, he looks no better (meticulously arranged mustaches included), uppity, yes, but not dapper enough to cut the mustard as a congenital heart-breaker to his female admirers galore.

However, this Hollywood adaptation, directed by a workmanlike Albert Lewin, resolves to downplay the sordidness in Bel Ami's social-climbing wiles and his misogynist contempt towards the weaker sex, his maneuver is self-seeking, for sure, but not without a proper gentility that is very characteristic of Parisian's silk-stocking upper crust, as if he intimates that it is those women's own fault of being uniformly bewitched by his natural appeal, as if he were merely a grudging condoner, and it always takes two to tango, whether it is Clotilde de Marelle (a 22-year-young Lansbury, already playing a widow with a tot under her belt), who pledges her subservient love to him at the expense of her own pride; or Claire Madeleine Forestier (Dvorak), the business-savvy wife of Georges' comrade-in-arms-turned-munificent-benefactor Charles Forestier (Carradine), voluntarily ties the knot with Bel Ami when she sees fit, business-wise; or Madame Walter (Emery), a modest-looking minted housewife, who foolishly takes their affair a bit too seriously, and her nubile daughter Suzanne (Douglas Rubes), gravitated to him like a witless moth to the unaccountable fire.

Therefore, it is not strange that George's belated redemption is vamped up by a pall of Hollywood romantic soft touch (Darius Milhaud's majestic score is also here to help), and then almost immediately dissipated by the cockamamie dueling face-off, that excruciatingly camp struggle of his rival is a whopping embarrassment even by Hollywood's dated standard at that time, which, in hindsight, could be second-guessed as a deliberate move to diffuse the fatalistic heaviness in favor of a sanitized feeling of facile poetic justice.

Yet, for all its foibles, Gordon Wiles' sumptuous production is a florid delight to sore eyes, and against the disadvantageous character arc, many of the distaff players manage to hold out their own stance, a slightly slouching Lansbury is excellently expressive apropos of her dramatic chops; Ann Dvorak takes pleasure and pride in rendering a beguiling ambiguity that manifest that she is not a victim but his equal in the aftermath, and Frances Dee, as Marie de Varenne, the sole rejector of Bel Ami's advances, makes her virtuous retort a welcome tonic to the picture's often disinterested pace and Sander's phlegmatic central performance.

Another boost is Max Ernst's painting "Temptation of St. Antony", materializes itself for several seconds in its chromatic flair, the sole exception in this magnificently restored black-and-white eye-catcher, which, after all, belies its sensational tagline on its original title "the history of a scoundrel!", more a Punch-obsessed schemer who is ironically blind-sided by and eventually dies from the aristo-recognition he is spoiling for.

George Sanders play Georges, a poor office clerk who slyly ingratiates himself with women in society to raise himself and become the wealthy man of import that he feels is his destiny.

Whilst this is a little dry perhaps, I found Sanders wonderful performance as Georges (Bel Ami) more compelling than in the 2012 version. He has created a really slimy sophisticated cad but one that is sort of likeable in a sneaky sort of way and which, unlike the recent version, better explains how he is seen as deeply attractive by the women he manipulates. At the same time throughout all this, he feels he is following the path he needs to tread whilst still, occasionally acknowledging that he is a bounder and that what he is doing does not bring him happiness - some of his expressions are priceless. Actually quite a subtle drama in many ways and proving that Sanders can really deliver.

Most excellent story-telling entertainment guaranteed to deliver to the viewer a satisfaction while viewing and closure at the end gripping you all the way. While the story is excellent the star of the flick captures the part and delivers the goods on a platter. The result? Reviews like this and a bonus too. There is a statement made by a blind pianist during dinner time in the movie that was quite profound. I took note of it at the time, appreciated it and only to have it catch me off-guard at a later time and as result, pulled some well-earned tears right out of me. I leave it to you to have your own experience and will tell you no more. Nicely done to all involved. Enjoy the backgrounds of life during this time, its polite society and the social, drinking, courting and dueling of the times presented. Supporting cast was excellent and the director made certain we got all the necessary messages without asking for them. I am a fan of the classics because they have the qualities that live on in the movie world. I especially enjoy the dialogues and scenery as well as customs captured for the movie themes. Today, its all sex, killing and loud noises as if that is all there is. The classics remind us there is much more art involved and clearly no accidents either. I enjoyed a nice roast chicken which I picked on and some delicious dessert as I love eating while watching a show. This is a good movie for a favorite snacking too. Enjoy this little "affair"

Guy de Maupassant was a novelist who wrote a novel about a man, a poor man, without any moral qualities. He only wanted to success in a society where all the people, the politic men, the businessmen, the journalists, the women are corrupt. The only king is MONEY. The Maupassant hero, Charles Forestier is going higher and higher in the society scale thanks to his seduction poser. He is in love with all the women who could help him in his action to climb the society stapes. At the end of the novel, he married himself with the biggest daily paper owner's daughter, in the greatest church of Paris : "La Madeleine". "Le Tout Paris" is there. He has a fortune and more, he will become a member of Parliament and later a Minister. The "useless" women are out of his view, but he is always keeping in touch with the pretty and the usefull women. The picture "THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI" is a story of MORALITY. It is everything, but not a story in the Maupassant idea. Why had they put "BEL AMI" in its title ?

Guy de Maupassant wrote the story of a scoundrel played by George Sanders. Angela Lansbury falls in love with him. He falls in love too and loves her little daughter too. But he wants to make his mark in Paris, and he needs money and a new name. His friend John Carradine gets him a job at his newspaper. Carradine has a wife. When Carradine dies, Sanders marries his widow, Ann Dvorak. Then he divorces her and plans to marry the young daughter of a rich banker. Her mother, Katherine Emery, foils his plans. "I have been scratched by an old cat." Sanders says.

The music is tops by Darius Milhaud. Russell Metty did the cinematography.

This is an excellent film on all levels. I have seen it many times and could always watch it again.

an adaptation. and a great cast. perfect choice for Georges Duroy character. a subtle, precise, impressive George Sanders in one of his magnificent roles. so, the key is not manner to adapted the novel of Maupassant but the art of each actor. because this movie is scene for a lot of stars. the story is old but the play is new. the novel is French and the science of details and nuances makes this American movie fruit of French cinema. the tale of Bel Ami is, in great measure, grace of Sanders and his partners, slice of Dorian Gray. it is not a masterpiece but it is a very interesting lesson. to define a world, to discover a book, to escape from Nick Ormerod last adaptation spell. a film as old yellow picture. good beginning to visit a world, to joy with drops of old fashion cinema style, to rediscover few crust of emotions and reflection to our small and bleak world.

This is the typical George Sanders typical role on screen, a role made for him, and only him. This suits him like a glove and I would say that no one else but him could have taken it. Cynical, ruthless, disenchanted dandy character that eventually was Sanders' trademark. One of his best role ever, so disgusting, nasty but with elegance and charm, lethal charm.

In the 1880's, a handsome rake schemes his way to the top of French society leaving a trail of exploited women in his wake.

I was about to slam Sanders' performance as a wooden one-note. Note how in the many close-ups his expression rarely changes, conveying little or no emotion, regardless the situation. Then it occurred to me. That's exactly right for such a heartless egotist as Duroy. In fact, he feels no emotion. Instead he's a walking calculator in the way he uses people. In place of warmth or animated charm, he seduces women with a strongly masculine presence and complete self-assurance, which Sanders conveys, in spades. Note too, how in the dueling scene, Duroy looks on impassively while his opponent musters strength to shoot him. Now a lack of emotion while staring death in the face is either evidence of an iron will or a simple lack of feeling. Of course, as an actor, Sanders can emote subtly or otherwise when called upon, as his lengthy career shows. So I figure his impassive manner in this movie is intended to define Duroy's character, and is not a deficiency on either the actor's or director's part.

Anyway, the movie itself amounts to a triumph of parlor room refinement. I especially like Lansbury. Her baby-face Clotilde provides enough meaningful emotion to engage the audience in ways that Duroy does not. In fact, the actresses, including a poignant Marie Wilson, are all well cast. Still, pairing the 40-year old Sanders with a girlish Douglas, half his age, amounts to a real stretch. But catch some of those parlor room sets that are doozies. The one with the checkered floor and striped wall had me cleaning my glasses. Overall, it's an oddly affecting morality play, with a style and taste that make even the painted backdrops somehow appropriate. Too bad this was the great Warren William's (Laroche) last movie. In terms of a commanding presence, he and Sanders belong together, as William's pre-Code films abundantly show. Nonetheless, this is one of the few features of the time to make a thoroughly dislikable character the central figure. And that took some guts. No wonder the film was an independent production.